kmartind

aobrien73 wrote: I am not buying that the 5 1/4 drives were ever read only.

You don't need to, it's talking about 8 inch floppies, not 5.25" floppies. They looked about the same, but much larger. The very first line of the table in the aforementioned link is what states they were read-only, but really, that was just the first drives they actually sold. IBM had write-capable drives internally at the time, and they used those to write the disks sent to customers, whose hardware could only read them.

ElGuappo

Even your link does not agree with you. They were always writable, assuming you had something to write with, which until about 73 or 74 no one did unless you could sweet talk a preconfigured head unit out of an Amdahl rep. Which most of us did because IBM was and still is a royal PITA to get anything out of.

aobrien73

kmartind wrote:You don't need to, it's talking about 8 inch floppies, not 5.25" floppies. They looked about the same, but much larger. The very first line of the table in the aforementioned link is what states they were read-only, but really, that was just first drives they actually sold. IBM had write-capable drives internally at the time, and they used those to write the disks sent to customers.

Well ok, what I was driving at is I don't buy that the disks were readonly. My experience is with the 5 1/4, descendant of the 8" disks. Sure I would believe that some drives were only readonly but this is not like a cd and largely not intended for software distribution. If someone can give me a reference that convinces me that they were ever readonly I would buy one. I am less concerned about the cardboard issue, I'm a software guy, as long as I can write to it I don't care if the disk is encased in cheese.

It just seems like a geek shirt that is off on some pretty specific details. I don't want to get a wedgie at my next DOS users club.

kmartind

ElGuappo wrote:No, it does not state they were read only, go back and READ it again. It says they were not field writable, and that had nothing to do with the floppy disks and everything to do with the availability of the equipment needed. Once someone attained a read/write head those exact same floppies with the out-of-date patches were recycled and reused.

I don't know who you are arguing with here. The Wikipedia page does say they were read-only in the table (and I quote "8-inch: IBM 23FD (read-only)"), and even though it says that, it's not really correct for the reasons I already stated, twice. In the text itself it also does say they weren't field writable, which is more correct. In any case, I think we actually agree.

bebopkeys

Except that I don't have the game anymore. Or a 1541 Floppy Drive anymore. Or a Commodore 64.

(sigh)

Yes! A flood of nostalgia just overwhelmed me reading your comment, when Load"*",8,1 popped into my head. We had two 1541 drives. I can still remember the song it sang as it buzzed away loading and loading and loading and loa...

Stlheadake

Am I the only one that remembers how 'lightning fast' these were over the cassettes used to store data?

We moved a couple a years ago and my wife tossed my complete Windows 3.1 installation set on 3.5" floppies as well as an ANCIENT auto-cad program that I had on the 5 inch floppies. I was so bummed. Her excuse: "They have sat there since we moved in and you haven't touched them. I figured they were junk."

Wodinn

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (later, Where in Time...), the *original* Test Drive, DigDug, and all those little games that came from SoftDisk... which I had to look up to make sure I remembered correctly. Night at Fleeners was a fun one.

The Laser 128 (AppleII clone) fell down a flight of stairs years ago and still works to this day. Haven't encountered any damaged floppies, either.

lobstrain

nocorvair

ellenbhawk wrote:Those of us who are old enough to have used floppy disks should probably not be wearing a t-shirt with the word FLOPPY on it.

LOL.... Quote of the day.

As an "old timer"... I remember the first PCs...having TWO floppy drives was an upgrade and a big deal. You could read your program AND write your data! Floppies being one sided. the notching punch to make them writable. the foil tape/tab to make them read only. making single sided disks "dual sided" by cutting out the backside... ah, the days. For those who quote audio cassettes... those came later in the commodore/amiga/TRaSh-80 days.
It is with fond memories and great frustration that I recall the punchcards of yore... I bid them farewell back with COBOL and FORTRAN and Assembler...

elangomatt

emehew wrote:You could put a notch in them to make them writable, then you could put a piece of tape over the notch to protect data from being reformatted. I used a hole punch to notch them.

Heh, I forgot about the whole notching of disks to make them writable. My parents used to save money on blank 5 1/4" floppies by buying 1 sided disks then we had a special notch puncher that made it so the computer could write on both sides of the floppy.

Wodinn wrote:Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (later, Where in Time...), the *original* Test Drive, DigDug, and all those little games that came from SoftDisk... which I had to look up to make sure I remembered correctly. Night at Fleeners was a fun one.

The Laser 128 (AppleII clone) fell down a flight of stairs years ago and still works to this day. Haven't encountered any damaged floppies, either.

I had Where in the World... as well along with the big book that came with it for looking up facts. I also enjoyed a game called "World Games" that was like the Olympics with some different events (like bull riding). I also had a Laser 128 too, but never really heard of anyone else admitting that they had one. My Laser 128 though liked eating floppy disks so we always just made a copy of the original disk and then used the copy till it went bad, and then made another copy.

Littlefish

Yep, this one's in that same "throwback" line as the "distressed" Metallica Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets t-shirts sold at Hot Topic so that teens can act like they've been listening to those albums since before they were born.

And I thought *I* was being a poseur when I bought my MOP t-shirt in 1990!

Cute idea, not t-shirt material. Too much in that vein of "this is what we THINK this particular decade was like."

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